Commercial and military aircraft comprise various electronic systems (often called “avionics”) that collect data and communicate information to other components during normal operation of the electronic systems. Such avionics may include flight management computers, entertainment systems, computers, radios, sensors, and GPS related equipment. Typically, standardized communication electrical interfaces that define the communication protocols for signaling are used to facilitate interconnection and communication between the various components.
Various electrical interfaces have been defined to facilitate interconnection between such components. Such interfaces may include, for example, ARINC-429 that is a technical standard for avionics data communications, and defines a physical and electrical interface for a serial data bus and associated protocol. Other avionics standards include MIL-STB-1553B that is a serial data bus interface often used on military aircraft. Other avionics on a commercial passenger plane, such as in-flight video entertainment components, may involve communication and processing of digital video signals. Other aircraft components may use other serial data interfaces, including the Electronics Industry Association (“EIA”) EIA-232 standard, the EIA-422 standard, and EIA-485 standards. Other electrical interfaces may be encountered in subsystems in an aircraft, such as the Universal Serial Bus (“USB”) that are prevalent on personal computers.
While dedicated integrated circuits (“chips”) may be available to implement these various communication interfaces, the resulting components are still limited to the interfaces provided by the chip. Incorporation of a new or updated interface may require incorporating new hardware and software to control a new chip. Prior to production of such components, each interface-specific chip, and the component it is incorporated into, must be tested, accepted, and designed into modules, before they can be accepted for use into commercial or military aircraft. An airplane may have numerous distinct electrical interfaces, and this may increase the complexity in maintaining the components used for each type of interface or system.
A flexible approach for accommodating various electrical interfaces would mitigate these aspects. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure herein is presented.